Undaunted by his predecessor’s failure to spark a manufacturing renaissance, President Trump also dreams of reindustrializing America. He won’t succeed either, because no president has the power to undo a half-century of post-industrial evolution.
Why have our two oldest presidents fixated on “bringing back” factory jobs? Both grew up in the ‘50s, when the United States bestrode a war-ravaged world like an industrial colossus. But the answer isn’t just nostalgia for a lost “golden age.”
There’s also a pervasive feeling that our country owes a promissory note to working families hit hard by deindustrialization. The disappearance of manufacturing jobs with decent pay and benefits — traditionally their ticket from high school to the middle class — has undermined their living standards and social standing.
As Senate Republicans work to develop their own version of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” (OBBB) passed by the House last month, one of their biggest priorities is making temporary tax provisions permanent. In a recent interview, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo argued that “certainty in the tax code” is essential for businesses to plan their operations. Senate Majority Leader John Thune also recently said that his conference “believe[s] that permanence is the way to create economic certainty.” But there can be no certainty in any tax policy so long as there remains an unsustainable mismatch between federal revenue and spending levels — which the OBBB would make significantly worse.
The United States is already on anincreasingly unsustainable fiscal path. The national debt today is almost the same size as the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), while annual interest payments on that debt are bigger as a percent of GDP than at any other point in American history. If the OBBB becomes law, the government will be on track to borrow another $2 trillion to cover the difference between spending and revenues every single year going forward. But debt cannot grow faster than our economy forever because, at a certain point, there will not be enough economic activity for the government to tax or borrow from to continue paying ballooning interest costs. The policies in OBBB would only increase the probability that our economywill experience such a fiscal crisis within the next few decades.
Whether they do it to prevent a crisis or react to one, lawmakers will inevitably have to change fiscal policies that result in unsustainable deficits. So if Senate Republicans were truly interested in using permanent policy to provide certainty to taxpayers, they would prioritize policies that reduce the budget deficit over those that increase it.
Fortunately, there have been many policy options discussed in recent months that the Senate could adopt to bring down the OBBB’s costs. Lawmakers could tighten the deduction for state and local income taxes paid by businesses — as PPI suggested in our last Budget Breakdown. Preventing wasteful overpayments in Medicare Advantage, which the Senate considered this week before backing off, could reduce spending by hundreds of billions of dollars without cutting benefits. The Senate could also incorporate tax changes previously considered by their colleagues in the House, such as increasing the excise tax on stock buybacks to create parity with dividends or further limiting the business deduction for employee compensation. President Trump has proposed several possible offsets of his own that were omitted from the bill, such as closing the carried interest loophole or introducing a new top income tax bracket for households with the highest incomes. And lawmakers can find even more possible offsets in the budget blueprint published last year by PPI, which includes enough savings to put the budget on a path back to balance by 2050.
If Senate Republicans refuse to incorporate any of these common-sense proposals to mitigate the OBBB’s deficit impact and put the nation on a more sustainable fiscal path, whatever tax provisions they enact would be permanent in name only. Under pressure from out-of-control debt and interest costs, future Congresses will inevitably have to revisit the policies put in place by today’s. Senate Republicans must remember that the only way to truly provide tax certainty is by building a sustainable fiscal foundation.
According to new analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, passing the OBBB would cause the bottom 10% of American households to lose roughly $1,600 per year, while the top 10% would gain $12,000 per year.
For Democrats, it’s a concern rooted in Trump’s historic strength on immigration with voters not in Los Angeles, but watching on social media and TV in swing states and districts across the country.
“There’s a background and a history, and so that limits the sympathy of lots of fair-minded Americans watching this spectacle unfold,” said Will Marshall, founder of Progressive Policy Institute, a center-left think tank.
WASHINGTON — As skepticism grows over the value of traditional four-year degrees, a new report from the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) highlights an innovative, upwardly mobile alternative: apprenticeship degrees that blend paid, work-based learning with college credit, helping Americans advance their careers without taking on crushing debt.
The report is an output of PPI’s Campaign for Working America, launched last year in partnership with former U.S. Representative Tim Ryan (D-Ohio). The Campaign aims to develop and test new themes, ideas, and policy proposals that help Democrats and other center-left leaders make a compelling economic offer to working Americans, bridge divides on cultural issues like immigration and education, and rally public support for the defense of democracy and freedom globally.
“Apprenticeship degrees represent the kind of common-sense innovation we need to rebuild the American Dream for working families,” said Ryan. “They combine real-world work experience with a college degree, making higher education more affordable and more relevant. If we want to compete with China and restore economic dignity in the American Heartland, this is the kind of policy we ought to be championing.”
“Millions of young people and workers are being forced to choose between a job they need now and a degree that may — or may not — pay off later,” said Ross, PPI’s Director of Workforce Development Policy. “Apprenticeship degrees eliminate that false choice by integrating work and education into a single, debt-free path to upward mobility.”
The report reveals growing skepticism about the value of traditional college degrees and presents apprenticeship degrees as a promising, debt-free pathway to economic mobility. Key takeaways from the report include:
Rising Doubts About College Value: 56% of Americans believe a four-year degree is not worth the cost — especially among younger graduates.
A New Pathway: Apprenticeship degrees offer students the opportunity to earn wages, gain experience, and receive academic credit — all while avoiding student debt.
Economic Mobility: Over 70 million Americans are “Skilled Through Alternative Routes” (STARs) but lack credentials to access higher-wage jobs.
Policy Support: The report outlines a blended funding model and urges Congress to include apprenticeship degrees in new workforce and higher education legislation.
Institutional Innovation: Reach University and Western Governors University are among the institutions pioneering this model, particularly in education and health care.
“Apprenticeship degrees are a bipartisan, practical solution to the intertwined problems of upward mobility, college affordability, and labor market readiness,” said Manno, Senior Advisor at PPI, who leads the What Works Lab. “With smart public investment and stronger employer partnerships, apprenticeship degrees can become a mainstream option across the country.”
Founded in 1989, PPI is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Find an expert and learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org. Follow us @PPI.
Each year, millions of America’s high school graduates face a difficult choice: Should they follow the pathway to a traditional university degree and hope it yields long-term financial stability and upward mobility? Or should they enter the workforce in an entry-level job and hope it yields long-term financial stability and upward mobility?
A traditional degree doesn’t guarantee financial freedom. Many graduates are burdened by student loan debt and underemployment. The median student loan debt ranges from $10,000 to $14,999, though a quarter of borrowers owe at least $25,000. Additionally, research from the Burning Glass Institute and the Strada Institute for the Future of Work indicates that 52% of bachelor’s degree graduates are employed in jobs that typically don’t require a college degree. Ten years later, that figure only drops to 45%. Meanwhile, many employers no longer regard a college degree as a gatekeeper credential for jobs, shifting from degree-based to skills-based hiring.
Clearly, college alone doesn’t guarantee labor market success. Furthermore, the idea that all high school graduates should attend college is no longer widely accepted. The 25-year mantra of “college for all” has lost its luster. According to the nonpartisan think tank Populace, when Americans ranked their priorities for K-12 education, “being prepared to enroll in a college or university” plummeted from the 10th highest priority (out of 57) in 2019 to 47th in 2022. After all, 62% of Americans don’t have a four-year degree.
Other surveys reveal a growing skepticism about the value of a four-year degree.8 More than half of Americans (56%) think a degree is not worth the cost, with skepticism most pronounced among college degree holders ages 18 to 34.
This situation has many interrelated causes, but policymakers’ chronic underinvestment in career education, workforce training, and alternative pathways to good jobs tops the list. Simply put, high school graduates and working-class Americans lack opportunities to access quality employment outside the traditional two- or four-year degree path.
All of this is a loud call for U.S. political leaders to reorient economic policy around the aspirations and values of America’s non-college majority. Americans want and need new pathways to financial prosperity and upward mobility. Polls and studies indicate that they view work-based learning, such as apprenticeships, as a promising solution to their current workforce challenges.9 The apprenticeship degree model is one of these emerging solutions.
Apprenticeship degrees anchor postsecondary education to paid workplace learning under the guidance of experienced mentors, establishing paid employment as a key component of the degree. The wages offset college expenses, enabling students to graduate with little to no debt, making the degree affordable. Students also receive academic credit for their on-the-job experiences and related classroom instruction, which leads to a degree over a period of two to six years, depending on the program.
The apprenticeship degree model is based on a new public-private partnership that positions apprenticeships as a new higher education pathway, expanding access to postsecondary education for individuals seeking alternatives to the traditional college experience. It also provides a talent pipeline for employers eager to hire candidates with real-world experience.
This report provides an overview of the American public’s demand for alternative pathways to a traditional college degree, with a focus on preparing individuals for the workforce. It then describes the emerging apprenticeship degree model as a compelling way to meet the demands for alternative pathways to workforce preparation. Finally, it proposes a variety of ways to sustainably finance this model, suggesting a blended funding approach.
Richard Kahlenberg has been enthralled with the multiracial, working-class coalitions envisioned by Robert F. Kennedy and civil rights activist Bayard Rustin since he was an undergraduate student at Harvard University. Decades later, Kahlenberg says those ideals led him to an unexpected alliance with conservatives in their fight to end race-based affirmative action.
Kahlenberg, a policy scholar who is currently director of housing policy at the Progressive Policy Institute, was an expert witness for Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) in its lawsuits against Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Ultimately, the Supreme Court two years ago struck down race-based affirmative action programs in most college admissions.
“Trump has pulled off something I thought I’d never see, which is he made Harvard look sympathetic,” said Richard D. Kahlenberg, a Harvard critic who supports the idea of giving admissions preferences to students with lower family incomes. […]
Mr.Kahlenberg said his “big fear” was that Harvard might scale back on social mobility efforts and seek to admit more students whose families could pay full freight, nearly $87,000 a year for undergraduates, including room and board.
FACT: U.S. earnings from international student tuition above those for gold, silver, platinum, diamonds, and gems.
THE NUMBERS: Export revenue, 2024 –
Total
$3,191.6 billion
Airplanes and parts
$123.3 billion
Natural gas
Automobiles, trucks, & tractors
$62.0 billion
$80.3 billion
Student tuition
$50.2 billion
Gold, silver, diamonds, gems, platinum
$48.6 billion
Soybeans
$24.6 billion
WHAT THEY MEAN:
Department of Homeland Security head and former South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem presents a strange view of higher education, and of international students in the United States, as she tries to stop Harvard University from hosting them:
“It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments.”
Back home, according to the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader, South Dakota’s universities have 2,150 international students this year, with the largest numbers from India and Nepal. The University of South Dakota/Vermillion is home to 820, the School of Mines 149, South Dakota State 826, and so on. Like Harvard’s international enrollees, they don’t really “pad the endowments” — that’s more an investment management job — but help provide operating revenue. Most pay full tuition (USD’s charges for international undergrads total $24,587 a year, grad students a slightly higher $25,127), which helps finance staff expenses, maintenance, and scholarships for low-income locals.
The 1.13 million international students in the U.S. this year are presumably watching Ms. Noem’s efforts with alarm. For now, they haven’t succeeded, as the courts have blocked her attempts to end Harvard’s international student program. She and her State Department colleague Mr. Rubio, though, are not only going after Harvard but raising basic questions about the future of international education in America, as they “pause” visa interviews for aspiring students and cancel some existing visas without notice. With this in mind, some background on international students and their place in American economic and intellectual life:
Basics: According to the Institute for International Education, 210 countries and territories have students in the United States. A review of them all would be pretty dull (see below for representative examples), but it’s easy to list the four countries with “zero” students here: Nauru, North Korea, Sao Tome e Principe, and the Vatican. By country, India’s 331,000 and China’s 277,000 combine for half the total, and Asia’s 805,000 account for two-thirds. Other regional totals include 57,000 from sub-Saharan Africa, 91,000 from Europe, 74,000 from Latin America and 11,000 from the Caribbean; 1,700 Pacific Islanders and 6,000 from Australia and New Zealand; and 52,000 from the Middle East. By school, the largest international enrollments are NYU’s 27,247, Northeastern’s 21,023, Columbia’s 20,231, and Arizona State’s 18,430. Other samples around the country include 11,800 international students at UM/Ann Arbor, 8,150 at Georgia Tech, 1,300 at the University of Alabama, 220 at the University of Montana, and 4,500 at Florida International.
By academic level, about three-quarters of the international students are graduate students and post-grads in “Optional Practical Training.” (“OPT” is mainly postgrad fellowships or temporary work authorized under student visas.) The breakout looks like this:
502,291 grad students
342,875 undergrads
242,782 “Optional Practical Training”
38,742 non-degree students (for example in English-language classes)
To put these figures in perspective, American colleges and universities enroll about 3.2 million grad students and 15.1 million undergraduates. So international students are a very large part of grad-school life, and a significant but not huge part of the U.S.’ undergraduate student body. As a very topical example, Harvard’s high international shares are in its graduate schools: 47% at the Kennedy School of Government, 34% at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 18% at the med school, and 53% — the highest share — at the Graduate School of Design. In “Harvard College”, the undergraduate school, 850 international undergrads make up 12% of the 7,110 enrollees— above the national average, but not overwhelming and fairly typical of elite private universities; see also Johns Hopkins’ 7%, Stanford’s 9%, Northwestern’s 10%, Duke’s 12%, and Caltech’s to 14%. Undergraduate shares at state universities like USD are usually in the 3%-5% range, and community college rates are lower.
As Ms. Noem and her colleagues ponder the future of this part of American academic life — really neither a “privilege” nor a “right”, but rather an example of autonomous civil society — a few things for them to consider:
Trade and income today: In the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ jargon, international student tuition is a form of trade called “education-related travel services”, and brings in a lot of money each year. In 2023 — the most recent year for which BEA has done an estimate — U.S. “exports” of this service totaled $50.2 billion. This is a bit less than the $80 billion in U.S. exports of cars and trucks, twice the $25 billion in American soybean exports, and about as much as we earned from gems and precious metals. Or, with the Trump administration’s trade balance fixation in mind, education is a large U.S. ‘surplus’ category: the $50.2 billion in exports are nearly five times the $11.2 billion Americans paid out as ‘imports’ to support U.S. students abroad.
Growth and innovation tomorrow: Further ahead, many international students go home with their degrees. Some stay on to work in the United States, often in valuable roles. Per the National Science Foundation, 58% of computer science PhDs working in the United States, 56% of all engineering PhDs, and 24% of all science and tech workers in general, were born abroad. So if the administration wants —for example — Americans to assemble smartphones and design ships here, it would be odd and perverse for them to be pushing out a lot of the future phone designers and shipyard engineers.
And the intangibles: Current money and next-generation tech labor supply are important. So are some less measurable things. As IIE’s tables show, places like Vermillion and Cambridge are training a large portion of Asia’s next-generation political, intellectual, and business elite, and significant chunks of their peers in Latin America, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. The practical meaning of this won’t be clear for a decade or more, but it’s probably something good. Nor can it be bad for the international students’ American roommates and lab partners to gain some firsthand views of the world outside, and some unfamiliar perspectives on the United States itself. And more generally, the very large role of American universities in worldwide education and intellectual life is (or at least ought to be) a point of pride.
So: With Harvard’s case against DHS set for a hearing next Monday, Ms. Noem and her associates might usefully get some perspective on the role international students play in America’s economy, intellectual life, and long-term global influence. One easy option would be to take an hour to call home and check in with USD.
FURTHER READING
PPI’s four principles for response to tariffs and economic isolationism:
Defend the Constitution and oppose rule by decree;
Connect tariff policy to growth, work, prices and family budgets, and living standards;
From the Institute for International Education, data on international students in the U.S. (and U.S. study abroad) for 2023/24, with enrollments by state, academic level, and institution.
… and a sample of their figures for student enrollment by country:
And the Center for Economic Policy Research on the role of ex-international students in U.S. business start-ups.
ABOUT ED
Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.
Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.
Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.
Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.
WASHINGTON — As concerns about a slowing economy mount, a new report from the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) highlights counties where the tech, information, and e-commerce (TIE) sector is driving growth.
Titled “The 2025 PPI Tech/Info/E-Commerce Job Index: Fighting Recession on the Local Level,” by PPI Vice President and Chief Economist Michael Mandel, the report identifies the top U.S. counties by their ability to create new TIE jobs relative to overall employment. The findings suggest that regions with a strong TIE presence are not only generating high-paying jobs more rapidly, but also fueling broader economic expansion.
“These findings show that investment in TIE industries can catalyze inclusive economic gains across a wide range of communities,” said Mandel.
The report arrives at a critical moment as sloppy budget cuts, tariff uncertainty, and tighter immigration policies could lead to a recession in the near future. The continued expansion of AI, cloud computing, and e-commerce logistics — all TIE industries — provides a potential counterweight to potential economic turmoil.
Key findings from the report include:
TIE sector employment has grown 18% nationally since 2019, more than four times the rate of other private-sector jobs.
Average weekly pay in TIE industries is 47% higher than in the broader private sector.
The top 25 counties on PPI’s TIE Index achieved a median 5.8% increase in non-TIE private sector jobs from 2019 to 2023, compared to just 0.3% for other large and medium counties.
Top performers include San Joaquin County, California; Collin County, Texas; and Somerset County, New Jersey.
PPI’s TIE Job Index, an evolution of its Tech/Info Job Index, combines employment growth with sector size to rank county-level performance. It reveals strong correlations between robust TIE ecosystems and overall job creation — even outside traditional tech hubs.
“While we don’t claim causation, the link is striking,” said Mandel. “Counties with strong TIE sectors tend to grow faster not just in high-wage tech jobs, but across the board.”
Founded in 1989, PPI is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Find an expert and learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org. Follow us @PPI.
The evidence of the past two decades is clear. The tech/info/ ecommerce (TIE) sector — which we will define below — and the closely related tech/info subsector, have consistently produced faster job gains, at higher pay, than the rest of the economy.
Focusing on the period since 2019, the tech/info/ecommerce sector has become essential as a source of good jobs. Propelled by massive investments in cloud computing, artificial intelligence and broadband, tech/info industries such as software, computer systems design, and computing infrastructure have generated hundreds of thousands of new jobs. In addition, ecommerce industries have added roughly 900,000 jobs over the same stretch.
All told, tech/info/ecommerce employment has risen by 18% since 2019, compared to a 4% gain in the rest of the private sector. Moreover, average weekly pay in the TIE sector is 47% higher than other private sector jobs.
That’s on the national level — what about the impact of tech/info/ecommerce jobs on local economies? We’ll show in this paper that counties with a strong TIE presence have stronger job growth in the rest of the private sector as well.
In particular, we will show that the top 25 counties, as ranked by the PPI Tech/Info/Ecommerce Job Index, reported a median non-TIE private sector job gain of 5.8% between 2019 and 2023. That’s compared with a median 0.3% gain for the remaining large and medium counties. The somewhat narrower PPI Tech/Info Job Index showed a similar difference in job growth between high-ranking counties and everyone else.
The implication: With recession now a possibility, counties with a strong TIE presence are better positioned to weather an economic slowdown.
The Network Law Review is pleased to present you with a special issue curated by the Dynamic Competition Initiative (“DCI”). Co-sponsored by UC Berkeley and the EUI, the DCI seeks to develop and advance innovation-based dynamic competition theories, tools, and policy processes adapted to the nature and pace of innovation in the 21st century. This special issue brings together contributions from speakers and panelists who participated in DCI’s second annual conference in October 2024. This article is authored by Diana L. Moss, Vice President and Director of Competition Policy, Progressive Policy Institute.
***
1. Introduction
Competition policy has a difficult relationship with the digital sector. Rates of innovation and productivity are some of the highest across the U.S. economy and ongoing advancements in technology (e.g., artificial intelligence (AI)) threaten to displace incumbent business models.[2] On the other hand, the digital ecosystems grow rapidly through acquisition, and many exhibit economic characteristics that foster market concentration. Until recently, antitrust enforcement in the U.S. has been reluctant to address market power in the digital sector. But it is now working overtime, with several unsuccessful merger challenges and pending monopolization cases that, when all is said and done, will take years to resolve.[3]
This article asks how antitrust’s history informs the debate over which models of competition—static, dynamic, or a hybrid approach—are fit for purpose in the digital sector.[4] The static model’s focus on efficiency in narrowly-defined equilibrium markets appears increasingly out of sync with the pace of innovation, unique economics, and new product development, especially for the digital ecosystems. This article explores the notion that U.S. antitrust enforcers, knowingly or not, put more weight on dynamic competition principles during the rise of the digital ecosystems but reverted more recently to a static competition framework.
Colleges and universities continue to look for ways to cut spending because of the Trump Administration’s policies towards higher education.
One June 2nd, Johns Hopkins University announced a set of policies to prepare for a possible decline in revenue. They join a list of schools including Brown University, Duke University, Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Washington, and the University of California system, that have temporarily paused hiring and vow to hold off on capital spending.
Hopkins has already seen $850 million in grant cuts resulting from the culling of USAID and other program terminations, plus the school has a large number of international students (many who pay full tuition) who may be dissuaded from studying in the U.S. due to the Administration’s more restrictive visa policies.
Let me be clear upfront — I’m pro-AI. The technology has enormous potential to lower costs, increase productivity, and raise real wages. And once combined with future advances in robotics, the gains will be especially important in physical industries such as manufacturing and construction, which have both seen negative productivity growth over the past decade.
I also acknowledge the need to stay alert for problems, and to regulate as necessary.
But one problem that doesn’t overly worry me is the prospect of a massive short-term “extinction event” of jobs. For example, Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, a leading AI company, recently told Axios that “AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs — and spike unemployment to 10-20% in the next one to five years.”
I find such a negative employment scenario for either college grads or non-college workers highly unlikely. First, previous forecasts of technology-driven job collapses have turned out to be premature, often signaling future job gains instead. It doesn’t make sense to just focus on job destruction from innovation without considering job creation as well.
For example, the big ecommerce innovation was supposed to lead to a “retail apocalypse,” or a “retail meltdown,” eliminating millions of retail sales jobs and replacing them with fully automated websites.
In fact, retail turned out to be fundamentally a logistics business, and having a good website was only the beginning of the e-commerce transformation. As I showed in a prophetic 2017 paper, getting fulfillment and delivery right was much more difficult and important, requiring more investment and more people. So while the number of poorly-paid retail sales positions declined by 15-20%, better-paid jobs doing ecommerce fulfillment increased even faster. Employment in the consumer distribution sector — including brick-and-mortar retail, fulfillment, and local delivery — actually rose by 1 million jobs from 2017 to 2024.
Second, Amodei’s timeframe is far too short. The adoption of AI in business operations is likely to be costly and slow: Applications of AI to the existing workflow of a business will cut some costs by speeding up one step, while exposing other bottlenecks. It typically takes years to adopt a new technology across an entire business, and AI won’t be different.
In a pharma company, for example, speeding up the creation of marketing presentations using AI will do nothing to cut the cost and time of clinical trials. AI can help there as well — but it’s a much slower and painstaking process. Indeed, even if AI helps move us towards new treatments for conditions such as cancer and Alzheimer’s, the necessary lab research and clinical trials to validate the insights will themselves become job producers.
Third, and related, what Americans complain about the most is the cost of necessities, such as housing, food, transportation, child care, and elder care. High tariffs may also increase the emphasis on domestic manufacturing. AI has a powerful opportunity to modernize these sectors, boosting capacity and creating a new wave of AI-complementary jobs, including for workers without a college education.
Fourth, the educated employment market has been fed in recent years by a wave of Immigrants. Since 2019, fully one-third of the net new jobs for workers with a college degree or better went to foreign-born individuals. (That’s according to the published data from the BLS. However, adjusting for under-measurement of immigration in the post-pandemic period gives roughly the same percentage.) If that flow is choked off by Trump’s actions against foreign students and educated adult immigrants, we are more likely to end up with skilled labor shortages than surpluses.
There’s no denying that AI will have a big impact on the job market. But for most people, it could be good news rather than a job apocalypse.
The words “common sense” are central in today’s political lexicon. President Trump’s Inaugural Address called for a “revolution of common sense.” Michael Baharaeen, columnist and chief political analyst for the center-left Liberal Patriot,asked, “Is a common sense faction of Democrats rising?”
Rival claims of common sense reminded me that my parents’ go-to maxim was “Use your common sense.” They directed it at me (and my siblings) when I was old enough to raise questions with them about doing something on my own. On the other hand, “That person doesn’t have any common sense” was the worst thing they could say about another person.
These maxims weren’t particular to my family. Growing up, I heard them repeated by adults to their children throughout our Italian American neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio. For my part, I found the simplicity of the advice appealing, though I was not always sure how to apply it.
As is often the case with simple truisms, it’s taken me years to understand the complexity and insight behind such timeless maxims. Only recently did I realize that my parents’ guidance was grounded in the virtue of prudence, which I’d learned about during my Catholic school education. This motivated me to re-educate myself on the meaning of this essential and overlooked virtue.
In today’s fast-paced, often chaotic environment, the need for prudence—a virtue that combines foresight, wisdom, and discretion—has never been more critical. Properly understood, “use your common sense” might be a rallying cry for our time.
Has affirmative action failed in America?? In this eye-opening conversation, Richard Kahlenberg—author of Class Matters and a longtime education and housing policy scholar—explains why race-based affirmative action has failed America’s working class and what can be done to fix it. A self-described “liberal maverick,” Kahlenberg dives into his controversial role in the Supreme Court case against Harvard, arguing that socioeconomic-based admissions would promote both racial equity and fairness without alienating the working-class voters Democrats are rapidly losing. From Harvard’s legacy advantages and billionaire endowments to MLK’s and RFK’s forgotten views on class over race, this episode challenges elite institutions, political orthodoxy, and the future of education in America.
The Court of International Trade is busy, but usually with pretty specialized stuff. Its 66 opinions this year mostly cover things like application of antidumping penalties to steel products and countervailing duties to catfish, customs broker licensing, and airline ticketing fees. It’s rare for one to address something basic enough to elicit quotes from the Constitution on tax authority, and from the Federalist Papers on “the ‘separate and distinct exercise of the different powers of government’ that is ‘essential to the preservation of liberty.’” V.O.S. Selections v. Trump — the one that struck down the Trump administration’s two “International Emergency Economic Powers Act” tariff Executive Orders last Wednesday — is one of that kind. Background on it, and then a thought on the responsibility of Congress:
The case’s core issue is one we raised this past January, in our “Four Principles for Response to Tariffs and Economic Isolationism” post anticipating the Trump administration’s tariff binge. This is Congress’ Constitutional authority over tariffs and other taxes, and the systemic risk unlimited Presidential power to create tariffs would pose:
“The Constitution’s Article I, Section 8, gives Congress unambiguous authority over “Taxes, Duties, Imposts, and Excises,” and for good reason. No single individual, president or not, should have the power to create his or her own tax system out of nothing. That, at minimum, risks impulsive and ill-considered decisions. Even more seriously, it creates a standing temptation for all future presidents to use tariffs to reward personal friends and supporters, and likewise to punish critics, business rivals, and disaffected states.”
Our concern quickly became reality, as Mr. Trump attempted to use three elderly laws to bypass Congress and create a new tariff system by decree. V.O.S. Selections addresses one of these laws: the International Emergency Economic Powers Act — “IEEPA” for short — which dates to 1976. It doesn’t mention tariffs specifically, but gives presidents broad authority to act quickly in emergencies such as the outbreaks of wars or natural disasters. (The other two laws, not covered in this case, are “Section 232” from 1962, allowing presidents to “adjust” imports to meet national security needs, and “Section 301,” 1974, authorizing threats or imposition of tariffs as a negotiating tool for administrations trying to reduce overseas trade barriers.) These laws share two unusual features: first, presidents don’t need Congressional approval to use them; and second, the policies they choose (tariff or otherwise) can stay on indefinitely. The temptation to rule by decree is thus latent in each, though no earlier president had wanted to try it.
The tariffs at issue in V.O.S. Selections come from two “IEEPA” decrees. The first, spanning three Executive Orders on February 1, declared an emergency over fentanyl and migration and used it to impose tariffs of 25% on Canadian and Mexican products, and 10% on Chinese-made goods. The second, on April 2, claimed that the U.S. trade balance is a national emergency, and used it to create a “global” tariff of 10% and a battery of “reciprocal” tariffs ranging from 11% to 50% on 56 separate countries and the 27-member European Union.
In practical terms, the tariffs mean massive new costs for hundreds of millions of Americans and millions of businesses. The small New York wine seller whose name is on the case (V.O.S. Selections, on 8th Avenue), for example, buys wine from vintners in the United States and 13 other countries. The permanent “MFN” tariff system imposes a tariff of 6.3 cents per liter for its Argentine, Lebanese, French, Italian, Greek, Croatian, Hungarian, and Austrian wines, and no tariff on wine from FTA partners Morocco and Mexico. The IEEPA decrees hiked this to 10% for the Moroccan and Lebanese vintages, 25% for the Mexican, and threats of 20% and then 50% for the European varieties.
The question V.O.S. and the four other firms in the case — a women’s bicycle shop, a pipe-maker, a designer of educational electronics kits, and a fishing tackle store — pose (via advocates in the Liberty Justice Center) addresses the decrees’ foundation: can a president, by declaring an “emergency,” take Congress’ Constitutional power to set rates for “Taxes, Duties, Imposts, and Excises” for himself? The Court concluded that he can’t.
Its opinion in V.O.S. Selections v. Trump and the parallel State of Oregon v. Trump (filed by the Attorneys General for Oregon and 11 other states*), cites the Constitution for authority over tariffs, and Federalist Papers 48 and 51 for the breach in the ‘separation of powers’ an unlimited presidential tariff power would create. Their unanimous conclusion:
“The question in the two cases before the court is whether the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (“IEEPA”) delegates these powers to the President in the form of authority to impose unlimited tariffs on goods from nearly every country in the world. The court does not read IEEPA to confer such unbounded authority and sets aside the challenged tariffs imposed thereunder.”
The administration has appealed, and the Supreme Court will likely get the final word. But for now, the C.I.T. opinion tosses out all the IEEPA tariffs: the 10% global tariff, the threats of 50% tariffs on things from the European Union and Lesotho (and 46% on Vietnamese goods, 36% on Thai goods, 47% on Madagascar’s vanilla and clothing, 28% on Tunisian dates and jewelry, etc.), the 25% on Canadian and Mexican-made goods and the 10% on Chinese-made products. The real-world impact of this is quite large: if upheld it will save American families and businesses — small firms like those in the case, farms, building contractors, retail shops, restaurants, hospitals, and manufacturers — hundreds of billions of dollars. The effect on American governance is greater: if the opinion stands, it will reaffirm Constitutional limits on unchecked and arbitrary presidential power, and bar presidents from nullifying Congressional tax authority through a law designed for quite different purposes.
Looking ahead: Assuming the C.I.T.’s opinion does stand, the IEEPA route for presidents hoping to bypass Congress and the Constitution will be closed. It isn’t the only such route, though, and the opinion leaves work for Congress and others hoping to avert further attempts to rule by decree. It doesn’t affect, for example, the “Section 232” 25% tariff on cars and auto parts, nor the drastically oscillating “232” steel and aluminum tariffs (50%, at least this week), nor the “301” law used first to impose tariffs on Chinese goods in 2018 for negotiating purposes but more recently to convert them to long-term “industrial policy.” The 232 and 301 laws have more procedural checkpoints and requirements than IEEPA and take longer to use, but share a core weakness: since neither requires Congressional affirmation of any new tariffs, presidents can use them to create their own tariff systems.
Whatever one’s view of the merits of tariffs in trade policy or as taxation, this spring’s experience makes such a situation Constitutionally untenable. Congress should not simply rely on courts to defend its authority. It has the power to do so itself, and — as Trade Subcommittee Ranking Member Linda Sanchez along with House Ways and Means Democrats propose — should use it now.
* Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, and Vermont
FURTHER READING
PPI’s four principles for response to tariffs and economic isolationism:
Defend the Constitution and oppose rule by decree;
Connect tariff policy to growth, work, prices and family budgets, and living standards;
Stand by America’s neighbors and allies;
Offer a positive alternative.
Court:
Court of International Trade decisions in 2025 (V.O.S. Selections v. Trump is #25-66)
The National Archives’ official Constitution transcript; see Article I, Sec. 8 for authority over “Taxes, Duties, Imposts, and Excises”, and also for authority over “regulation of commerce with foreign Nations.”
And from the Library of Congress, Federalist Papers 51-60 cover tax authority and the separation of powers.
Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) and all other Ways and Means Committee Democrats propose revision of IEEPA, Section 301, and Section 232 to require Congressional approval of any new tariffs, quotas, or other trade limits under these laws.
ABOUT ED
Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.
Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.
Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.
Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.
